The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1831: Amazing Spider-Man #218, July 1981

Been a while since I read some Spider-Man. I'm currently revamping my storage system now that we're in a new house, and it's involving some necessary shrinking of the amount of space my collection takes up. I'm making my way through my Marvel Comics collection right now, and I realized I actually have a pretty significant Spider-Man collection. I'm not 100% sure where these comics came from. The collection feeds from a couple of large collections that I bought when I had my store, as well as my own significant collection that dates back to the Doctor Who Weekly's I brought with me from England when we came to Canada. Had I had the foresight, I'd have traced the provenance of each part of the collection. That would be interesting information to have.

Anyway, this was a pretty disturbing comic, in retrospect. First, Peter is really rude about a lady's looks in this issue. He tries to smooth it over by saying she's not very nice, but Mr. Parker is definitely displaying a propensity for socially-constructed notions of beauty. Second, villains The Sandman and Hydroman get dumped in the river together and come out as a single gestalt creature, eventually dubbed "Mud-Thing." It shows rudimentary signs of consciousness, but is generally unmoving and unthinking. It's this unthinking that has me disturbed. Both Sandman and Hydroman possess complete control over the cells of their mutated bodies. But in order to turn completely into sand or water, they'd need to have a different way to store their software (personality, emotions, memories), as we've seen numerous times that their entire bodies can disintegrate into their constituent respective elements. Where is the soul in a pile of sand? I would imagine that the easiest solution would be that each grain, each drop, was encoded with the fundamental information of the whole - each atom contains the entirety of Sandman or Hydroman's personalities. So what happens when those atoms are, through the admixture of water, made into something else? What if the personalities are also mixed into a psychic mud? To me, Mud-Thing stands still because there are two psyches mashed into one, unable to move or think or do much of anything. And given the destruction by drying this creature suffers at the end of the comic, I'm curious how Sandy, at least, managed to come back to become Silver Sable's back-up.

I might read a bit more Spider-Man over the next few days. I'm intrigued.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1667: Marvel Super Special #20, 1981 (Movie Adaptation Week)

I'm reasonably sure I've seen this film, though there really is a good chance that I haven't. I have vague impressions of it, though I would only have been 7 when it came out.

Maybe I haven't seen this film.

I'd really like to, though, because this was a pretty great story. While I'm concerned that the special effects may not have aged particularly well, the tale that's told is pretty solid. There's lots of cool twists, some very mythic stuff going on, especially the bits that touch on Christianity. It's a story that really feels like it could have happened in our world. Though I can't really say why without spoiling one of the coolest parts, IMHO, of the story.

Apprentice wizard Galen has to face off against the last dragon. That's all I'll say. It sounds like a pretty standard fantasy story, but, as I mentioned, there's neat twists that definitely set it apart from the usual bunch. Though I grew up on a pretty steady diet of Dragonlance in my early teens, I've never really been a huge fan of the genre. Given my penchant for Dungeons & Dragons, that's a bit odd, but I think I've always taken from superheroes the same sort of escapism that fantasy brings. We geeks, we sometimes focus on one genre to the virtual exclusion of all others. So it's worth noting, for me at least, when a fantasy story does resonate. This one did.

Denny O'Neil adapts the screenplay, and Marie Severin and John Tartaglione handle the art. One of my planned theme weeks will feature Ms. Severin and a couple of other female artists from the early days of Marvel. The likenesses to the cast of the film are well done. I can't imagine having to draw a story in which you had an actual real-life original that could be compared to your work on pretty much every page.

The back half of the magazine is given over to "making of" features. There is, of course, one that focusses on the creation of Vermithrax Perjorative ("The Worm of Thrace Which Makes Things Worse") - the titular dragon. One particular part of that article jumped out at me in the first description in the article: "...it is the last of the great dragons, a four-hundred year old androgyne, a fire-breathing monstrosity" (emphasis mine). There's no other mention of this in the entire magazine, but I find the idea that the dragon is non-binary very interesting. On the one hand, the creature is squarely conceived as an evil force outside of nature, contrary to humanity and it's perceived binary of male/female. From this perspective, the dragon represents something contrary to Christian binary worldview. On the other hand, Christianity is not well-presented in this story, particularly, and even the ending hints at a hidden way of perceiving magic within the Christian framework that comes to dominate the world. But the dragon is still (SPOILER in case you missed the title of the comic!) slain, and the magic, and androgyny, they represented is hidden. I'm perhaps making too much of this, but I'm fascinated by the appearance of gender identities that are becoming more widely recognized in older works of literature.It tells us a lot about cultural attitudes toward such things through history.

(Of course I've just realized that the main female lead in the story begins in drag, so as to avoid the lottery of maidens sacrificed to the dragon, but "comes out" partway through the story. Maybe I need to think more about this one.)

"You can't stop me. After all, I've been a man longer than you have."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 411: Green Lantern #90, August 1976

With this issue, it had been 4 years since there had been a Green Lantern title in publication, which, to me in the present, seems insane. Not that I've ever been a particular fan of Hal Jordan (more a Kyle Rayner fan, myself), but the Green Lantern name is A-list, and the fact that there was a time when he was out of print is bizarre.

This is a pretty good tale, of aliens and mistaken identity, but suffers for its being a follow-up to the O'Neil/Adams run on the title. Of course, Adams is replaced with Grell here, who eventually comes to redefine the character of Green Arrow, who co-stars with Lantern for a little while.

I wonder if anyone's ever explained why the rhyme Green Lantern repeats each time he charges his ring is necessary. I can't remember if it's part of the Geoff John's GL reboot of the 2000s, but in this issue its a pretty fundamental part of the story, in that the ring won't recharge unless the rhyme is not only spoken, but completed. While GL is, for the most part, a science fiction character, this uses of rhyme smacks of magic, a nice link to the powers of the original Green Lantern.

I'll do some research, and find out. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 352: Batman - Legends of the Dark Knight #5, March 1990

Oh. That was a good story. A beautiful mesh of the detective and the mystic, a classic Bat-baddie, and Bruce Wayne shooting down a guy about to tell a nasty joke about Native Americans.

My hands have been very sore all night for some reason, so I can't really type much right now. "Shaman" was completely worth the read. Highly recommended.

Onward! (Ouch!)

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 351: Batman - Legends of the Dark Knight #4, February 1990

If the Christopher Nolan films suffered one major absence from the Bat-Mythos, it was the lack of spiritual significance of Bruce Wayne's roll as Batman. Though not always evident in the comics, there have been writers who have toyed with the idea that it wasn't just the death of Thomas and Martha that spurred Bruce to become what he does, but a more mystical, destiny-inflected movement of the universe. Morrison (of course) plays this up fundamentally in his run on the Bat-titles, and we see him beginning to play with this notion in the story that follows "Shaman" in Legends of the Dark Knight. And while he's probably the most blatant about this aspect of Batman, he's not the only writer to deal with it. O'Neil addresses this facet quite nicely in this issue of LOTDK, linking Bruce's eventual taking on of the Bat mantle to a healing story he is told, and required to tell, in this story. At a key moment in the tale, he puts on his cowl and relates as story that he was told when suffering from hypothermia and close to death, and though his telling is not as expert as the shaman who told it to him, it does, in the end, save the life of an old man. While Bruce, ever rational-minded, cannot explain this, the man's granddaughter counsels him to simply accept it, that there are mysteries in the universe that even his detective's mind cannot unravel.

Of course, there's some superheroic fisticuffs peppered throughout, and the big climactic fight scene is about to happen. Be here tomorrow for the conclusion!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 350: Batman - Legends of the Dark Knight #3, January 1990

Bruce Wayne's very early story continues, and his return to the Alaskan village that began the story offers a fairly savage critique of the work of anthropology - always a colonial project, in this story, it is the downfall of a ritual practice, one unwittingly funded by the aforementioned Mr. Wayne.

The Bat deploys one of my favourite aspects of his crime-fighting in this issue: his propensity for disguise. And I'm not talking about the cape and cowl, but honest to goodness disguises that look like human beings. Matches Malone is perhaps his best known alias, but the shoeshine man that gets information from Captain Gordon in this issue is just a good. We're very often reminded of Batman's ability to pose as Bruce Wayne, and forget that if he can do that and be Batman, he can be whomever he needs to, really.

I will say, at least for this story, that it's moving very slowly. There's a real crime noir feel to it, and it's progressing at the same sort of sludgy, steamy pace that those old movies do. I mean, there's definitely the action-y bits with the Batman, but those take a back seat to the investigative stuff that Bruce undertakes as Bruce. It's a bit different from the usual Batman story, but, as I mentioned before, O'Neil has a handle on this character like few before or since, so I'm trusting to his instincts. I think they'll pay off.

See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 349: Batman - Legends of the Dark Knight #2, December 1989

I'm going to admit something now that it an unpopular stance to take with regard to superheroes: I'm not really a big fan of Batman. I recognize his importance to the genre, and I recognize the importance of his various titles to the industry. I even recognize the importance of his varied transmedial appearances. But, when it comes down to it, I've just never been a big fan. Much like Marvel's Wolverine, I've always considered him to be an alright hero who gets more play than he needs.

Which is why this series has, so far, been such a lovely surprise. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I don't know Dennis O'Neil's work that well, but I'm absolutely sure of one thing: he knows Batman. The story is a great mystery, it's poking about at the more spiritual aspects of Bruce's transformation into Batman, and it's got Alfred delivering some of the sassiest Alfred lines I've heard. It's all just so good. Edward Hannigan's art is spare and restrained, certainly well in keeping with the aesthetic of DC at the end of the 1980s. It offers a vision of a world that I could absolutely see Gaiman's Sandman and Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre inhabiting, along with their costumed brethren.

There is the troubling appellation of Native American people as "Indians" here, though it seems to fit the era that the series is chronicling. I'm excited to see where the story goes, and to have found a Batman that I actually quite enjoy.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 348: Batman - Legends of the Dark Knight #1, November 1989

Will update this tomorrow, as well as yesterday's blog. Been a very busy weekend.

Of all the Batman titles in my collection, Morrison's run on the title aside, Legends of the Dark Knight is the series of which I have the most consistent run. I'm not sure how that happened. It's an interesting title, in that it charts some of Batman's earliest adventures, before the weight of continuity and supporting case began to bog him down. He's more foot soldier than general in these stories. Anyway, I've had this first story arc kicking about for a long while now, and, thus far, the project has been quite light on the major players in the DCU. I thought it was time for a change.

I don't know much of Dennis O'Neil's work on the Batman titles, but I do know that he is linked to their incarnations through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. This tale, set at the very beginning of Bruce Wayne's crime-fighting career, captures a strangely optimistic Batman, one who hasn't been exposed to the horror's that Gotham city has in store for his future. This is young Bruce Wayne, still not quite divorcing the billionaire playboy image from the dark crusader. For the series to be called Legends of the Dark Knight links it explicitly to Miller's Dark Knight that would have preceded it by a few years, but the character we're given in this story is far from the elderly architect of Miller's seminal series.

This is Batman before he has all the answers, before he can beat all of the bad guys. This is Batman learning, and it's a fascinating story. I'll be continuing on with this story for the next five days, just to bring my bat-quotient up.

See you tomorrow.